fd front side housing water jacket failed

[stuart wizy]

stripped down my blown fd today to find 1 rotor destroyed with 2 apex seals fully ripped out, 2 fecked rotor housings but all the side plates are perfect and well within tolerance apart from the front plate shown, its blown the compresion wall through into waterway which probably caused the motor to pop due to over heating.
This plate is mint apart from the colapsed wall and im thinking of welding it up and milling the groove back out, dont fancy building it up with epoxy cause i reckon it will blow out again with compresion.
Has anyone done this before??

see pic below

[Grizzly]

I\'ve welded up where i over cooked a Port runner But i decided not to use it becouse i could\'nt pre heat it enough to get the weld to properly take, so i let a proper Coded welder have a go and he got it stuck but blue\'d the Surface, So i did\'nt want to take the risk of it being warped etc so it was just easyer to get a second hand plate.

[antnicuk]

if you put a small peice of stainless tube in the hole (water way below it) and epoxy around it then flatten it and shape your groove it will work, the stainless tube doesnt expand and contract very much and holds the epoxy in place, supporting it so it wont blow out.  The right epoxy is well up to the job.  BUT you could probably pick a good 2nd hand plate for between 100 and 200 quid.

[oldone]

Seems a lot of work and \'risk\' involved to get it perfect....it must be easier to get another one...:Typing

[antnicuk]

we had to do it on the 20b cos the housing are bcoming rare.

[oldone]

we had to do it on the 20b cos the housing are bcoming rare.

That makes sense,how did you get the plate to hold the temp whilst you welded it ?

[Grizzly]

how did you get the plate to hold the temp whilst you welded it ?

Its very hard to do, you have to pre heat it with Oxy bottles before you weld it, When i did mine i oviously did\'nt warm it enough and the Pro guy who ended up welding it Over heated it and the Machined surface went Blue around the weld.

antnicuk, Does\'nt Stainless expand Quicker then Cast? Would it not have been better to Butcher an Old plate and make a repair section?

[stuart wizy]

rained of today so done a bit more cleaning all plates up and sorted the busted wall plate.
Ive cut a small radiused piece of stainless tube 150mm dia 3mm wall, its about 15mm long by 5mm high matching the rad of the port made into a wedge shape, ive then pressed this in so its only covering the original break and not obstructing waterway at all, now i just need to back fill the fillet with epoxy and then sand it down.
its imposible for this to be moved or blown out cause of the recessed shape of the water jacket.

some of the other plates have pitting in the thin walls at the bottom of the plates so im gonna fill them in and sand them down to like bruce turrentine recomends on all rebuilds.

see pics later to get what im on about cause im sure this could save a lot of good plates that are scrapped due to mazdas sh@t castings.

[antnicuk]

antnicuk, Does\'nt Stainless expand Quicker then Cast? Would it not have been better to Butcher an Old plate and make a repair section?

i\'m not sure,  ask me in about a 1000 miles!

Era,  we didnt weld it, we epoxied the tube in to act as support to hold the epoxy in place an support it. The tube then just acts as the water way.

I did weld my FD centre plate when i went through while porting. It was only a tiny hole, just used an Arc welder with Disimilar (spelling) rod. Now that definately worked and we didnt heat it. but that was straight on cast inside the port.  Although i do heat turbine housing when welding a v band to it.  (stick it the oven for an hour!